So with his blessing he dismissed Dom Galors for the day.
CHAPTER V
LA DESIROUS
Prosper le Gai—all Morgraunt before him—rose from his bed before the Countess had turned in hers; and long before the Abbot could get alone with Dom Galors he was sighing for his breakfast. He had, indeed, seen the dawn come in, caught the first shiver of the trees, the first tentative chirp of the birds, watched the slow filling of the shadowy pools and creeks with the grey tide of light. From brake to brake he struggled, out of the shade into the dark, thence into what seemed a broad lake of daylight. He met no living thing; or ever the sun kissed the tree-tops he was hungry. He was well within Morgraunt now, though only, as it might be, upon the hem of its green robe; the adventurous place opened slowly to him like some great epic whose majesty and force dawns upon you by degrees not to be marked. It was still twilight in the place where he was when he heard the battling of birds' wings, the screaming of one bird's grief, and the angry purr of another, or of others. He peered through the bush as the sound swelled. Presently he saw a white bird come fluttering with a dropt wing, two hen-harriers in close pursuit. They were over her, upon her, there was a wrangle of wings—brown and white—even while he watched; then the white got clear again, and he could see that she bled in the breast. The sound of her screaming, which was to him like a girl crying, moved him strangely. He jumped from his saddle, ran to the entangled birds and cuffed the two hawks off; but seeing that they came on again, hunger-bold no doubt, he strangled them and freed the white pigeon. He took her up in his hands to look at her; she was too far gone for fear; she bled freely, but he judged she would recover. So she did, after he had washed out the wound; sufficiently at least to hop and flutter into covert. Prosper took to his horse and journey with her voice still ringing in his head.
In another hour's travel he reached a clearing in the wood, hedged all about with yew-trees and holm oaks very old; and in the midst of it saw a little stone altar with the figure of a woman upon it. He was not too hungry to be curious, so he dismounted and went to examine. The saint was Saint Lucy the Martyr, he saw; the altar, hoary as it was with lichen and green moss, had a slab upon it well-polished, with crosses let into the four corners and into the middle of the stone; there were sockets for tapers, and marks of grease new and thick. Before he approached it a hind and her calf had been cropping the grass between the cracks of the altar-steps; all else was very still, yet had a feeling of habitancy and familiar use.
His instinct when he saw an altar being to say his prayers, he knelt down then and there, facing the image, yet a little remote from it. A very soft tread behind him broke in upon his exercises; some one was coming, whence or how he did not then know. The comer was a young girl clothed in a white woollen garment, which was bound about her waist with a green cord; she was bareheaded; on her feet were thick sandals, bound also with thongs of green. Prosper watched her spread a white cloth upon the altar-slab, and set a Mass-book upon a stand; he saw her go and return with two lighted tapers for the sockets, he saw a silver crucifix shine between them. The girl, when all this business was done, stepped backwards down the steps, and stood at the foot of the altar with hands clasped upon her bosom and head bent lowly. "By the Saints," thought Prosper, "Morgraunt is a holy place, it seems. There is to be a Mass."
So it was. An old priest came out of the thicket in a vestment of yellow and gold thread, bearing in his hands the Sacrament under a green silk veil. The girl knelt down as he passed up the steps; he began his Mass, but in so low a voice that it hardly touched the forest peace.
Rabbits came creeping out of bush and bracken, a wood-dove began her moan, two or three deer stood up. Then Prosper thought—"If the beasts come to prayers, it behoves me as a Christian man to hear Mass also. Moreover, it were fitting that adventure should begin in that manner, to be undertaken in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." He went forward accordingly, flush with the girl, and knelt down by her. When it was the time of Communion, both drew nearer and received Christ's body. Prosper, for his part, did not forget the soul of the dead man, De Genlis or another, whose body he had buried in Cadnam Wood, but commended it to God together with the sacrifice of the altar. The woman came into his mind. "No, by God," thought he; "she is the devil, or of him; I will never pray for her," which was Prosper all over.
Mass done, he remembered that he had the honour to be uncommonly hungry. The priest had gone back into the wood, the girl was removing the altar furniture, and seemed unconscious of his presence; but Prosper could not afford that.
"My young gentlewoman," he said with a bow, "you will see before you, if you turn your head, a very hungry man."